Why it works: Potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
New Potatoes in Butter
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Rub off the skins from the potatoes, wash them well, and wipe them dry.
Cook
Place the potatoes in a well-tinned stewpan or saucepan with the butter.
Simmer over a gentle fire for about 30 minutes.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,456 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- New potatoes
- Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender and creamy as they simmer.
- Butter
- Cooks the potatoes gently in fat, adding richness and a smooth, buttery coating.
The step that matters
Simmer over a gentle fire. Gentle, low heat lets the potatoes cook through and soften without breaking apart or the butter scorching. A vigorous boil would tear the potatoes and burn the fats.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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